I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and former Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 3 books and actively review books on this blog.
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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Valiant(Kindle Edition) is the fourth book in the Lost Fleet series featuring Captain John "Blackjack" Geary, who was rescued from an escape pod from 100 years ago to lead a fleet back into Alliance space. The series is mostly brain candy, good for airplane reading or between heavy reads.

Once again, we have relativistic set-pieces of battles in space, but this time, the focus is on relationships --- both fleet level politics, and the romantic kind. As you can imagine from Campbell's past, the romantic relationships are handled extremely badly, with characters behaving for the sake of plot, rather than as human beings would. Fleet level politics is handled a little better, and John Geary learns to finally delegate. It is perhaps a truism that naval novels are mostly morality plays about leadership, a theme dating back to the Hornblow novels, so this isn't a surprise.

There's also a background plot that's been playing along throughout the novel series, and I won't spoil it here, but rest assured that it moves along as well. Unfortunately, with so little space, we basically finish the novel feeling as though not much happened. Only recommended if you're a fan of the series.